Once I gazed at you in wonder
Subtitle: poems
By: Jan Heller Levi.
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Baton Rouge
Language: eng
Number of pages: 90
Description: Jan Heller Levi has said that her poems are not confessions but conversations. Here, then, are her conversations with the world - from the sexy to the sublime. What sets Levi apart, however, is that she lets the world answer back. Difficult fathers, ineffectual mothers are forgiven; ex-lovers are blessed.

Sophisticated but never jaded, this poet looks in wonder beyond the self: a cup of coffee in one of New York's ubiquitous Greek diners can launch Levi into a meditation on truth versus compassion; a suite of elegies for her mother takes us from a hospital corridor to the studio of a television talk show where God is the guest; a poetry reading in which she shares the stage with a folk singer illustrates Levi's gift for illuminating the absurd textures of late-twentieth-century existence.